Budget Cuts

Owning a house is an expensive endeavour!  This is a fact I have learned many times over but no lesson has been as harsh as getting a new furnace and having to trench around the house to fix the basement!  We are talking into the teens of thousands of dollars here!  What does that mean?  I means that our somewhat ‘decadent’ life style has to change a bit. 

Really it should have changed a while ago, but up until now we have been making steady progress with finances, albeit slow steady progress.  It is amazing though how much you can cut out of the budget when all of a sudden you need to save nearly $800 a month.  The good news about all this is that it will go a long way into teaching us what we need and what we don’t.  The bad part is, some of the things that were once deemed necessary have to fall on the cutting room floor.

And so, for the first time since 2010 I have no gym membership.  Can’t afford it.  That might seem horrible!  But honestly, the plan for the summer was to suspend the membership due to the home gym I have put in place anyways.  And I have been using that home gym for over a month now with no adverse effects.  Thanks to running and biking for cardio, and the heaps of workouts I have stored up from all my time spent in sessions with Jodi workout ideas are not a problem.

In the nice weather.

I’m kind of dreading the winter, freezing in my garage lifting weights, having no choice but to run in the cold.  It will be character building if nothing else.  Or I’ll simply have to find a way to make $50 a month and get back to the gym come December.

Money is not all gone, don’t feel sorry for me or anything, I still get my ‘allowance’. Everything I want, or want to do has to come from it now though.  For example I am going rock climbing today, planned before the budget cuts.  Originally I would have gone, paid for the actual climbing out of my allowance but got lunch on the way there at subway or something and then gone to dinner with the people after just with the bank card.  Now I’m paying for the climbing, bringing a lunch and trying to keep dinner under $10 as well since that will also be from my allowance, and I need to have the cash to renew my Batman subscription!

I’m hoping to approach this whole finances thing the same way I did getting in shape.  I know Amber would like it if I was able to that’s for sure.  Though I make no apologies for how I spend my allowance.

Touring The Blogs

I think this blends nicely into this bit.  This morning I clicked a couple of links and found a blog that is ‘critical’ of a couple of the other blogs I read.  I think critical is putting it nicely.  I’m not going to give the name or a link because I don’t want to drive traffic there and I think reading things laced with as much hate as there seems to be is not good for the soul.

Basically the blogs read like this.  “Hey did you read what *this person* wrote on their expletive blog?  They say they want to lose weight, but then blog about eating 5 expletive cupcakes! What a lying expletive expletive expletiver”  Of course the commenters jump on board for the most part.

My ‘I make no apologies for how I spend my allowance’ line there makes me think of this.  Some high and mighty financial blogger might read this and be like, “Hey look at Chris over here, he says he wants to pay off debt but then goes rock climbing and reading comic books!”  And to that I say, I’m going to still live my life!  I’m not cutting out every expense in order to do this, I still have to enjoy things.  Maybe someone else would live with no heat, hydro, and internet to get this bit done, but I am not that guy.

It makes me think of when I was losing weight.  I was that guy in that regard, I ate about 1400 calories, which is nothing for a guy, and I was at the gym every day.  When my friends asked if they could come to the gym with me did I scoff at them?  Did I attempt to use my fitness as a way to make them feel bad?  No.  I encourage them, or try to though sometimes it comes across wrong.  I’m trying to build people up, not tear them down.

Is having a cupcake when you are losing weight really all that bad? And even if it is, does it effect you (you in this case being a person separate from the person losing weight and eating a cupcake)? 

I’m all for tips and advice, I’m all for motivation and being honest with people about workouts and weight and all that.  I’m all for calling a spade a spade and constructive criticism. But you don’t have to be a jerk about it!

I recognize that it is not our mistakes that define us, but the efforts made to correct them.  Or I really hope so at least for my own sake.